Unboxing a Google AIY kit for the Raspberry Pi

And as usual... Lessons learnt

After missing out on the free Google AIY Kit that came on the front of the MagPi magazine, and further missing the restocking of these kits, I finally was able to buy one from the PiHut. Watch me un-box, build and try to set up on this video

So the problems I had with this kit were the different button mechanism that was supplied. This meant that both the printed and online instructions didn't help. The button supplied though was a better quality arcade mechanism with separate micro switch. I got there in the end.

Secondly I had an issue with the power supply. My desktop one allowed the Pi to boot and some of the test script to work, but when it got to the part that recorded me, the Pi rebooted. My desktop power supply delivers 0.5a. I used the Alexa (amazon echo) psu and the system worked fine.

Finally the instructions were slightly misleading in that they implied that the arcade button should pulse once booted. In the end this pulse happened only once I had activated the scripts.

I'm hoping that I can make the needed modifications to the system so that this functions like a google home. However, you can get a home for around £50, whereas at £30 -ish for a Pi, and £30 for this kit (assuming like me you didn't get it on MagPi) it would be much cheaper to buy a home.

Matthew Norman...

... who lives in the UK, who is not an actor, not a clock manufacturer, did not write a rough guide to cuba and also has never written for the Telegraph. I have written books on coldfusion and web databases.